


Half the Battle

by Siria



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 11:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7168427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Look the part, and no one will question your right to be there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half the Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to sheafrotherdon for betaing.

Adam sets off for Harvard with a suitcase full of clothes dreamed up by Ronan and approved by Gansey. "Look the part, that's half the battle," Gansey says, tapping a finger against a stack of crisp button-downs. "Tailored clothes, manicured nails, shoulders back and head high, and no one's going to question your right to be there."

"Is he going to college or campaigning to be fucking prom queen?" Ronan asks, but later when Adam goes to close the suitcase he finds two brand new cashmere sweaters sitting on top of it. One is green, one blue, and both smell faintly of summer in a now-vanished forest. Adam understands that to mean that Ronan agrees with Gansey. He supposes that makes sense, coming from someone who understands just how easily clothes can be used to say _fuck off_. 

The suitcase goes into the trunk of the car that had been a graduation present from Ronan. Adam would never have accepted it, if not for how genuinely mortified Ronan looked to have dreamt up a safety-conscious hybrid vehicle. His suitcase sits next to a bag of bedding and towels, another containing books and Adam's elderly laptop, a box with a few keepsakes—almost all of his worldly belongings, save for a few changes of clothes that are stowed away in a drawer at the Barns. 

Blue puts an Aglionby Alum sticker on the rear bumper before he leaves, and gives him a fierce hug. "It's symbolic," she says when she pulls away, disentangling one frayed end of her sweater from Adam's watchstrap. "Because you're getting out of here and leaving it behind you, and you get to spit toxic fumes all over it at the same time."

That thought keeps him company all the way to Massachusetts. Adam's never been outside of the state before, and the long drive is exhausting and intriguing in equal measure. It's not like he's moving to a new country for college, but there are just enough differences—enough new things, enough absences—to remind Adam that he's left Virginia far behind. He settles into the dorms, meets his roommate, gets to know which buildings his classes will be held in. It's like his first few months at Aglionby, only more intense. 

_only got lost twice today_ , he texts Ronan just before he falls asleep. _getting better? hope you and opal are ok, miss you._

 _OPAL CHEWED THROUGH LEATHER BELT TODAY SHE IS FUCKING AWESOME_ , Ronan replies. He's got a phone now, but refuses to learn out how to turn off the capslock. Adam figures it lets him show all the enthusiasm he'd otherwise never let himself display. _NAVIGATION IS OVERRATED WHO WANTS TO BE IN LOVE WITH A PIGEON_.

Adam's roommate, Chase, is the kind of guy who shows up to college on Monday and has a girlfriend by Wednesday. Chase and Paige look unsettlingly alike—fair-haired and tanned with long faces and thoroughbred limbs. They say "yah" instead of "yeah", talk about winters at Gstaad and summers in the Hamptons, and Adam feels intensely awkward around them in a way that he never had even with Gansey. He's pretty sure that no matter how hard he scrubs, they'll always be able to see the engine grease underneath his fingernails. 

Paige spots the Aglionby sticker on his car the very first week of classes and looks at him with narrowed eyes. "A Raven boy, huh?"

"Yeah," Adam says, feeling his face heat, almost certain that she's going to call him a liar, a fraud, that no one who speaks like him could ever have gone to Aglionby. 

But all Paige says is, "My cousin Tanner went there or whatever. Cool."

Adam never makes friends with Chase and Paige exactly, but they still invite him to parties. So do some of the people in his Expos 20 class, and his economics course. He doesn't always take them up on the offer, because years of habit are hard to break and going more than a day without studying makes him feel itchy and uncomfortable. But he's also mindful of Gansey telling him that half the point of Harvard isn't the classes. 

("If you just want the certification, you might as well go to a state school," Gansey had said, wrinkling his nose. "Harvard is for making life-long connections. _Networking_ , Parrish."

"Ugh, why do I even like you," Blue had said, kicking Gansey half-heartedly in the shin.

"Look, if you still want to attend community college, I'm not looking down on you for that," Gansey had said, which had sparked Round 453 of an argument between him and Blue so fierce that Adam had been glad when Ronan started drowning them out with the chorus of 'Squash One, Squash Two.')

So every so often, Adam goes to a party in someone's dorm room, or an apartment off-campus; drinks terrible, lukewarm beer and meets people from what feels like every country in the world. Parties at Harvard aren't so different from parties everywhere else, except for the way eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds can speak about interning on Capitol Hill as off-handedly as Adam might say that he went to the store to pick up some milk. It's the kind of self-assurance that money can buy. Connections, too—Adam notices that Chase most often introduces him to people as "Adam, he went to Aglionby", not "Adam, he's from Virginia" or "Adam, he's thinking about going pre-law too" or even just plain old "Adam, my room-mate."

He drinks at these parties, and sometimes when he's buzzed enough he dances. He's never buzzed enough to respond to any of the people who hit on him. 

"Bro, why did you turn her down?" Chase says when they're leaving a party one night, having celebrated submitting a particularly difficult paper with jello shots and a really unorthodox version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. They're both a little unsteady on their feet, and Adam thinks with longing of his mattress and the prospect of being unconscious for an hour or twelve. "She's totally hot and Paige knows her room-mate, she's up for whatever, even anal."

Adam blinks, pretty sure that if he really tried he could hear Blue Sargent screaming in outrage at that, but he settles for saying, "I have a boyfriend, Chase."

"What?" Chase asks as they enter their building and climb the stairs to the second floor. "What, what, Parrish, you totally never said you're dating someone! Do I know him? Is he that English dude in your econ class? With the accent and the ass? Like, I'm only situationally whatever but I'd still hit that."

"No," Adam says, blinking against the exhaustion and trying to focus long enough to get his key in the door of their room. "He's back in Virginia."

"Oh," Chase says, winking, "still at Aglionby? Gotcha."

"What? No," Adam says, trying to get his key out of the now-open door and toe his shoes off at the same time. "No, he's not at Aglionby. He's a farmer, he, he"—he yawns hugely despite himself—"he doesn't like shirts with sleeves or uniforms."

Adam's hangover the next morning is strong enough that he's glad he can just roll over at the first hint of sunlight through the blinds, pull his pillow over his head, and sleep until noon. Chase—who probably burned through his liver and most of his pain-sensing nerves by the age of fifteen—is long gone when Adam gets up, shuffles to the shower, and consumes a brunch of coffee and Advil. 

He goes back to bed for a while, scrolling through the latest update in the sprawling group chat—Henry's in Amsterdam; there's been a chicken on the roof of 300 Fox Way for two days and no one can figure out how it got there but Blue reports that Orla's convinced that it's possessed—before turning to his private messages with Ronan. Ronan's mostly sent him photos: the fields around the Barns covered with dew in the dawn's half-light; a blurry self-portrait of Opal grinning toothily at the camera; a glass paperweight cupped in the palm of Ronan's hand that was dreamt into being with the swirls of whole galaxies suspended inside it. It makes Adam's chest ache with something like homesickness, just not for a place.

 _You cd come visit at Thanksgiving if you want?_ he writes. _Maura cd watch opal for few days & I cd show you campus._

 _MAYBE BUT MY SOCIAL CALENDAR IS PACKED_ , Ronan responds. 

That evening, Adam's just finishing up dinner in the freshman dining hall when his phone chimes. 

"What's got you grinning like that?" Paige asks. She's wearing sunglasses indoors, which probably means she had a much more epic night last night than Chase and Adam did, and she hasn't even touched the dry toast on the plate in front of her. "Ugh, obnoxious."

"My boyfriend's coming to see me for Thanksgiving," Adam says. 

Ronan had forwarded him a booking confirmation for a return flight, CRW to CLT to BOS; he'd changed the subject line of the email to _Your love is lifting me higher, Parrish._

"That's sweet," Paige says. 

"Yeah," Adam says absent-mindedly, concentrating on the reply he's sending to Ronan and the prospect of four whole days together. "I didn't really think he could make it because he needed someone to look after his kid but I guess it worked out. And he doesn't really like leaving home—pretty sure this will be his first time on a plane."

"Huh," Paige says. 

There are papers to finish and presentations to hone, problem sets to figure out, midterms to power through on a heady mix of sleep exhaustion and caffeine. Adam's busy enough to be distracted, so he blinks awake one morning to realise that Ronan will be there within twenty-four hours, that he hasn't showered in just as long or done laundry in a whole lot longer. He knows that Ronan wouldn't care if Adam's entire room was half-buried beneath dirty socks, but Adam cares. It's silly, because whatever Ronan likes about him, it's not Adam's ability to get into an Ivy League school or earn a prestigious degree, but Adam wants Ronan to see that he's capable of holding his own. He wants Ronan to be proud of him.

Chase shows up around eleven, wearing board shorts even though it's freezing outside and sunglasses even though it's cloudy. He's clutching a Starbucks cup in both hands, but doesn't offer one to Adam, just slumps onto his bed and sips alternately one from the other. "Ugh, dude, we went hard last night. It's like, I know tomorrow is for regrets but now it's tomorrow and there's not enough coffee to take away the regrets, you know?"

"Sure," Adam says dryly, having had a few regrets in his time. 

"What are you doing?" Chase asks as Adam finishes putting his freshly laundered clothes away in his dresser, and then pulls out sheets to make up his bed. "We're going home in two days, the whole point of going home is having someone else do your laundry."

Adam decides to ignore most of that statement, even though he can feel the muscles at the nape of his neck tightening. He settles for saying, "My boyfriend's coming to visit. He doesn't really get away from the farm very much, so."

"Oh," Chase says, "huh, cool," chugs both of his coffees in quick succession, belches, and announces that he's going to meet Paige for lunch. 

Adam finishes tidying, goes to the library to make sure that he won't fall behind by putting aside most of the books for the length of the Thanksgiving break, and then swings by the closest convenience store. Ronan is a legal adult who is responsible for the maintenance of an entire farm, but that doesn't mean that Adam is entirely confident that he'll show up in Boston having remembered to bring a toothbrush or a razor. And while Ronan can just dream up whatever he wants, Adam doesn't really want to have to explain to his RA if Ronan leaves behind anything with unusual bonus features. Flying toiletries tend to attract notice.

Chase is asleep by the time Adam gets back to the room, and so he expects Chase to be gone when he wakes up that morning, heading back to the Connecticut suburbs in the bright red Jeep his parents had given him as a graduation gift and which has never negotiated anything steeper than a parking garage. But Chase is still there when Adam wakes up, and when he comes back out of the bathroom, freshly showered and dressed. 

"I thought you were planning to leave this morning?" Adam asks him. Ronan's going to stay with Adam in the dorms, and Adam's not particularly keen at the thoughts of anyone else present when the two of them are together for the first time in months. 

Chase mumbles something inarticulate from beneath his comforter, which Adam takes to mean that Chase indulged in the hair of the dog last night and won't be fit to drive for another couple of hours. He sighs, but Ronan won't arrive for several more hours. Chase is sure to have left by then, and Adam will actually get to spend some time alone and in person with his own boyfriend. 

As he laces up his sneakers, Adam's own phone chimes with a text from Ronan: _AT AIRPORT IN LINE BEHIND OLD WOMAN TRYING TO BRING THREE DOGS ON PLANE IN COACH YOU OWE ME PARRISH_. In return, Adam sends a string of smiley face emojis, partly because he's slowly learning that it can be fun to tease Ronan, partly because it's easier to hide behind tiny cartoons when he feels lit up with happiness at the thought of seeing Ronan again. 

Adam leaves to get breakfast, idles his way back to the dorms with a to-go cup of strong coffee through a campus that's noticeably quieter. He's been here for months now, but every now and then he's disoriented anew by the fact that not only did he make it out of Henrietta but he made it to Harvard. He's got a university ID card in his wallet; he's got favourite coffee shops now, a sales assistant in a local book store who smiles at him and tells him not to work _too_ hard, and the prospect of an internship in New York next summer. It's starting to feel, just a little, like he might really be able to shake the dust of Henrietta off his feet. 

He's walking down the hallway to his dorm room when Ronan texts again. _BOARDING GATE IN CHARLOTTE SMELLS LIKE PICKLES SEE YOU SOON_. The room is empty when he lets himself in, everything's as ready as it can be, and so Adam lets himself stretch out on the bed and start a novel that someone in his econ class had recommended to him. Adam's not the biggest reader of fiction—even if he'd had the time to read anything other than his textbooks while he was back at Aglionby, it would have felt self-indulgent—but he's slowly been coming to think that maybe there's something to the idea of losing yourself in a story for a while. The novel Marisol had recommended to him is about a secret school for shapeshifters in Louisiana, and a large part of Adam's enjoyment of it comes from the fact that it's nowhere near as surreal as the last two years of his life. 

He marks his place when he reaches the halfway point of the book and checks his phone again. No text from Ronan, but the online flight tracker shows him that Ronan's flight has landed and is taxiing towards the gate. Adam's just about to send him a "Welcome to Boston" message when the dorm room opens, and Chase and Paige come in. 

Adam frowns. "I thought you guys were leaving this morning?"

"Yeah," Chase says. "Look, about that bro… it's just, I mean—like, I'm not good with the heavy stuff, you know, but—"

Paige sits down on the edge of Chase's bed and crosses her legs, letting out a world-weary sigh that would have impressed the inhabitants of 300 Fox Way with its utter disdain for male inarticulacy. "So what Chase is trying to say is that this is an intervention."

Adam slowly sits upright and stares at her. "I don't do drugs," he points out, "and I'm pretty sure I drink maybe a third as much as you guys do."

Paige waves a hand. "Not that kind of intervention."

Chase sits down next to Paige and fixes Adam with a soulful look. "An emotional intervention. Look, we get it. You're young, you want to walk on the wild side or whatever—"

"Sow some wild oats," Paige adds solemnly. 

"—But dude, consider starting as you mean to go on."

"Oh my god," Adam says flatly. He'd been prepared to suffer through having Chase as a roommate for a year, but if Chase turns out to be a homophobe, Adam will be at the housing office's door as soon as it reopens after the break. 

"Whatever you got up to at Aglionby is one thing," Chase continues. "It's out in the middle of nowhere and like, no one cares where you stick your dick when you're there because it's like training wheels or whatever."

Adam blinks to chase away the disturbing images that conjures up. 

"But you're at Harvard, you're connected, you dress well, you've got that whole _Gone With the Wind_ accent thing going on," Paige says. "You have all of this stuff going for you and you're throwing it all away on some, like, country hick? That's just not smart, Adam."

"My mom, like, loves _My Fair Lady_ ," Chase says, "so I totally get the attraction of thinking you can, you know, mould someone or whatever."

"We're concerned," Paige says. "You've got a real chance at getting into a frat or a final club and you're bringing some guy to campus who lives on a Virginia _farm_ and has a _kid_ already?" She pulls a face when she says "farm" and "kid", as if the words leave a foul taste in her mouth, and Adam suddenly realises what they've been imagining. Adam, the rich kid at Aglionby, lured away from the straight and narrow and a career in Big Law by Ronan's wiles; Ronan, spending his days sitting on the porch of a run-down farmhouse, playing banjo and yelling at a snot-nosed kid and never wearing anything other than tank tops. 

_To be fair_ , Adam thinks to himself, tamping down as best he can on an increasing urge to laugh, _that's not entirely untrue_. 

He bites his lip, gathers up keys, wallet, and phone, and says, "Excuse me," in a trembling voice. Adam manages to make it out of the building before he starts laughing. He gets funny looks as he walks to through Harvard Yard and across the street to the subway stop to meet Ronan, but he can't help it. He's spent months here thinking, expecting, that people would look at him and be able to see through Gansey's clothing choices, Ronan's car, be able to hear the echoes of the trailer park in his untamed vowels. 

Now he's got the jackass son of a political strategist and a hedge fund manager thinking that he's too good for Ronan Lynch. 

"Hey," Ronan says when he comes out of the station a few minutes later. His hair's grown out a little, and one corner of his mouth curves up ever so slightly, as if he's been more in the habit of smiling this past year. But his jeans are still painted on, his tattoos still peek out from beneath the collar of his t-shirt and his jacket's still just this side of a cliché—the same Ronan Lynch who no doubt haunts the nightmares of Aglionby's staff. 

"You okay?" Ronan asks, putting his small overnight bag down at his feet while standing almost toe-to-toe with Adam. "You're smiling an awful lot for you, Parrish."

Adam notes absently that Ronan has shaved, very carefully, and that even after two flights and three airports, the scent of aftershave still clings to him. Definitely a Virginia hick who's here to tempt Adam with his wiles. 

No one who looks at them here can tell what they are at all. In his left ear, Adam hears the welcome, familiar rustle of distant trees. 

"Just happy, I guess. I'll tell you about it later," Adam says, and kisses him.


End file.
